Congress: Still Working Hard at Being Ineffective, Useless Seat-Warmers

I asked an Occupier in DC named Rob Wohl, why the movement he’s a part of is resonating with people – why as over 3,000 Americans have been arrested in demonstrations and even journalists and vets have endured tear gas and rubber bullets, the movement is still growing.

His answer? “Because we are analytically correct.”

What does that mean? Apparently, they believe they have the facts on their side. History certainly is. And as author Michael Lewis said when asked about the Occupy Wall Street movement, they also have justice on their side.

New census data released shows we have record high poverty in this country. It’s up to 16 percent or 49.1 million Americans (that’s over five New York Cities). We have the worst wealth inequality in the industrialized world (meaning we’re on par with some third world countries). We have the highest health care costs in the world. And a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute notes, “U.S. productivity grew by 62.5 percent from 1989 to 2010, far more than real hourly wages for both private-sector and state/local government workers, which grew 12 percent in the same period.” Basically Americans are working much (much) harder for much (much) less. Pair that with the fact U.S. businesses are making record profits and that’s why Americans have taken to the pothole-laden streets to protest.

It’s not just about the bank bailout. It’s not just about Wall Street. It’s about the goal of the wealthy to milk their fellow citizens until they’re completely dry. And while regular Americans are condescended to about their proverbial bootstraps, the U.S. government has helped the wealthy at every turn. So it’s no surprise they’ve won. And now that people are brittle and dusty – there are encampments all over the country.

The question isn’t, “Why are there so many people sleeping in parks?” The question is, “Why aren’t there more?

In the wake of this massive protest – right in the middle of the tenure of the lowest rated House in our nation’s history – a group of men and women whose approval rating of 9 percent is hovering just above the margin of error – what do they do? They pass another symbolic (think: busy work) nonbinding resolution to reaffirm “in God we trust” as the national motto.

I could have made that up as satire and I’d get a letter saying I was being too harsh.

Time spent on a bill (of which there are FOUR versions) reaffirming a phrase already on every denomination of money, every courthouse and most public buildings is about as contemptuous as this body of seat-warmers can get.

It’s “let them eat cake” with a little of King George III’s “the colonies will submit” thrown in for flavor.

Yes, the do-less-than-nothing House has passed a whopping 54 bills originating in their chamber in their nearly full year in office. Their counterparts in previous congresses usually author and pass three times that. And if you subtract passing go-no-where bills to defund NPR, Planned Parenthood and other specters like Obama Czars and take into account their days off (next year they’re only set to work 109 days out of the ENTIRE year) – they’ve put in a lot of effort to be ineffective.

Which is what you’d expect from self-hating government workers like the House leadership. They’re illustrating how lazy, stupid and useless government can be – by example.

To sum up: the American people are paying more for less, working more for less and asking more…and Congress is doing (wait for it) LESS.

The Occupiers are right. They are “analytically correct” in their assessment. Their government is failing them. As another Occupier put it, maybe it’s “time to replace Congress with people.”

About Tina Dupuy

Comments

The corporate profits records you speak of are not percentage records… they are total US profits… not adjusted for inflation.

This means that the total profits are lower than reported.

Not only that, the record is set over a 60 year period, when the population in the US grew by 50%.

This means that profitability has to be HUGE just to keep pace…. with 50% more people in the work force, more work is being done… so there is simply far more business being done… but the profitability of each individual business is *down*.

An illustration:
100 businesses profiting $10 each, are doing better than 150 businesses profiting $8 each, even though the latter group set a “record”. That record (a 20% increase in profits for the group), is really a loss for each business individually (a 20% reduction in profits).

You know what they say, “figures lie, and liars figure”.

Let’s keep the statistics to the statisticians, and the comedy to the comedians.

Wellness

Carole Bartolotto: The problem with concluding that GMOs are safe is that the argument for their safety rests solely on animal studies. These studies are offered as evidence that the debate over GMOs is over. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Environmentalism

Walker Foley: Elected officials seem to think there’s only one side of this property rights argument. The people who live in these communities have rights too, but the oil companies seem to have the jump on [the politicians’] side of the fence.